Five-year-old Payton Benson was eating breakfast Wednesday morning when a bullet with her name on it exploded through the wall of her north Omaha home and killed her dead.
The gang bangers poisoning the young mind of the cussing Omaha toddler fired the shot.
ACTUALLY, little Payton Benson died because a bunch of American Frankenstein's monsters a block over -- no doubt once just like the cussing Omaha toddler, poisoned by the same culture of death that hates life and knows no hope -- were shooting it out in the middle of the street. Witnesses mentioned a handgun and a high-powered rifle.
The mother, Tabatha Manning, ran out screaming, a relative said.
Payton was Omaha's first homicide of the new year.
“Bullets know no boundaries, they know no target, they are going to land where they land,” [Police Chief Todd] Schmaderer said during a press conference Wednesday evening.
“Enough of the gang violence, and enough with the random shootings.”
Schmaderer and [Omaha Mayor Jean] Stothert promised to find the person who killed an innocent girl. Both leaders expressed their sympathy for Payton's family members.
“I promise this family and I promise this community that my homicide investigators, my gang investigators, will work around the clock, leaving no stone unturned to solve this homicide,” Schmaderer said.
Shell casings indicated that gunfire broke out at the intersection of 44th Avenue and Emmet Street, a block from Payton's house. Multiple people exchanged gunfire, Schmaderer said.
Police were looking for three black men who fled in a black Jeep Commander. Initial 911 reports described one as having a handgun, one armed with a high-powered rifle and the third wearing a bandanna.
Police found a Jeep matching that description at St. James Manor Apartments, 3102 N. 60th St., but they had not determined whether the vehicle was involved.
(snip)
The chief said he had a message for the assailants: “You know who you are, and law enforcement will find out who you are. It may not have been your bullet that struck this little girl. So do the right thing and do yourself a favor in the process. Come down and talk to law enforcement and tell us what you know.”
Massey Allen III, 33, who identified himself as a relative of Payton, said he was stopped at 45th Street and Bedford Avenue when he heard gunfire and ducked under his steering wheel.
Allen estimated that about 20 shots were fired. Several neighbors called 911, and officers patrolling the neighborhood heard the gunshots and responded, Schmaderer said. Payton was pronounced dead at Creighton University Medical Center.
Allen said Manning, 31, had recently moved to Omaha from Chicago. She wanted to earn a nursing degree, he said.
SEE WHAT trying to better yourself gets you in the 'hood? Your kid killed at the breakfast table by the unintended consequence of unintended consequences. That's the underclass anticulture for you. How very racist of me to mention that, despite it not being just a black thing.
Today, the police chief is outraged, the mayor is outraged and the whole city is outraged. We've been outraged before; we'll be outraged again. We Omahans -- we Americans -- are goddamned good at outrage, but not so much at actually doing something about that which outrages us again and again and again and again and again.
We're working on it, though. Results are preliminary, but we're pretty sure the solution has something to do with giving teachers concealed weapons, blaming big government (or institutionalized racism . . . one or the other), lowering taxes (or raising taxes on the rich), moving farther out in the suburbs, moving to a dee-luxe apartment in the downtown sky, cutting food stamps because . . . well, look at Those People . . . and going shopping.
The shopping part, we've got nailed.